It has become a frequent line for comedians, mainly on telly panel shows, to make a joke of adverts saying ‘work at home’ or ‘make money on the internet’. They have a point, there are hundreds of such ads and they are very easy to find on sites everywhere. However, they are getting a poor name because they promise the world, easy money for little input and have the loot stream in! Nope, the old saying “if it looks too good to be true, it definitely is” absolutely does apply here since what is not said is the same for anyone putting up a website for anything is that they need to understand, or know someone who knows, SEO.

Permit me, while I declare an interest. I run an affiliate marketing site which I have created as a fishing tackle shop to sell maggot drowning gear, DVDs, books and travel goods and services for anglers. I have enrolled with several affiliate programs and have put banner links to lots of companies who provide fishing tackle, insurance for anglers, travel companies offering holidays for anglers and other ephemera. Why? Well, because when I was learning SEO, I was searching for help on how to build my familiarity and skills, and frequently came across affiliate marketing as a phrase, and after a while I examined it to find out more. Let me explain how it works.

There are many thousands of firms trading[ goods and services electronically as we know. They all see the same issue, which is getting customers to their shop to purchase stuff. They all have their SEO to announce themselves and their products so that customers can find them on the search engines, but that often is not sufficient so what they do is to join affiliate marketing schemes and offer a cut of any sales brought about by somebody carrying their banner or link on a site to their shop. It’s very popular way of drumming up business in America and is becoming more so in other countries, and of course someone creating up an affiliate marketing site like mine can insert ads for companies anywhere in the world and still get paid.

Where the posters for affiliate marketing are deceptive is that it is very easy to set the website up and the providers provide you everything you need (you do not need any technical skills at all). The main knowledge is to know how to cut and paste the code for the adverts. So, the website can be constructed and put online in no time flat, but that does not mean anything since how are you going to get people to go to your site in order to click on the adverts to go to your partner’s online shops? You need SEO to do that, and it doesn’t happen fast.

However, as the SEO work is having it’s effect, then adverts can be inserted in the search engines which only cost when they are clicked. The cost can change as you have to bid for insertion on the search engine results pages and you have to rely on your website being good enough to interest the visitor and that they go to your partner sites and buy something.

So, don’t be fooled. Yes, the theory of affiliate marketing is a good and solid one, but expecting to put one up and then being able to take a trip to the Maserati showroom in the next week is not really likely. You need SEO to enhance your website, put it in the search engine results and then maintain it there. The two tasks fit together, SEO is the key, affiliate marketing is the income generator.

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